She gasped in a breath, and all her fear fled, even before he spoke.
“I loved her.” Tears dripped off his chin. “So very much.” His hands returned to human and hung limply at his sides.
Her heart was both breaking and swelling at once.
“She begged me to…” He seemed to be trying to say more, but the words wouldn’t come. He looked away, peering over the edge of the ledge, and for a heart-stopping moment, she thought he might simply step off. Of course, he could fly—he was a dragon—but flying wasn’t what was written on his face. Pain. Despair. Agony. If those runes that scrawled across his arms could spell out what was happening inside this beautiful man, Arabella was sure that’s what they would say.
He spoke to the gaping darkness below the ledge. “She begged me to save our child. She was sealed with dragonfire, made immortal and impervious to any normal scalpel or blade or anything short of dragon talons.” He turned to Arabella with eyes glistening in the moonlight. “My dragonfire sealed her. My talons ripped her apart. Our baby was dying, and he was burning his way out of her. I tried to save her by saving him and ended up killing them both.”
Her heart cried out for her to go to him. To believe his words and kiss away his pain. She hesitated only a moment, but then she realized—no man in the world could fake this. No man would. There was no excuse-making, no manipulation, just raw pain that she wanted to smother with her love.
She shoved away from the mountain wall and hurried over to him.
He stared at her fast approach and caught her shoulders, holding her away from him. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked, incredulous. “I killed my mate.”
“I heard.” She worked her hands up to hold his face with her two hands. She peered into his eyes. “I heard a story about a man with a horrible choice. A choice that broke him. You’re not to blame for that. You’re not to blame for any of it, Lucian.”
He blinked and stared at her. “I chose her for a mate.”
“And she chose you, didn’t she?”
He cringed, uncertainty pulling at the corners of his eyes. “She did.” He paused. “And I shouldn’t have allowed it.” Then he stepped back, pulling away from her, a scowl darkening his face. “Come with me.”
Before she could reply, he shifted into his dragon and bowed before her, beckoning her to climb aboard his glistening golden form. He was beautiful and powerful and glowing in the moonlight. She wouldn’t have said no under any normal circumstances, but especially not now—not on the cusp of him facing this dark secret he’d carried for so long. This horrible guilt for something that wasn’t his fault. She recognized it, saw it every day in her clients, her best friend, her mirror… that kind of guilt, trying to own something terrible that happened, as if owning it meant you could prevent it from happening again. That was a poison that would eat you alive.
If she knew nothing else, she knew that.
Arabella practically leaped across the few feet between them and scrambled up on the warm, silky smoothness of his scales. Her feet were barely braced against the edge of his wings before he swooped into the air and banked toward the keep.
He was taking her to his lair.
And then she would show him exactly how she felt.
The feel of Arabella on his back was a form of torture.
A sweet, hot, insanely sexy torture.
It was the perfect distraction from the insanity going on inside his head. This woman—this woman—was more than anything he deserved. In fact, he should run the hell away from her as quickly as possible because the chances of him resisting her were dropping by the second.
He told her. He’d cracked open his chest and showed her everything broken and wrong about him, every reason she should run in the opposite direction, and she’d run across a steep mountain ledge to throw her arms around him. To comfort him, for fuck’s sake.
There was no more deadly strike she could have made directly to his heart.
He would take her back to his lair… and then he would send her packing. He could barely talk about what had happened to Cara. It had been years—decades, really—and the words coming out of his mouth had brought it all back. The darkness that threatened to take him down. The inescapable pain. There was no possible way he could go through all of it again.
He might love Arabella, but that was precisely why he couldn’t keep her.
He simply couldn’t afford to love someone again… and lose them.
He might as well turn wyvern; the result would be the same.
As they approached the keep, he signaled the rooftop entrance to his lair to open. He landed, let her slide from his back, then turned away and strode purposefully toward the door.